


Kill them then cry over them

by Penstrokes



Series: Self indulgency [3]
Category: Captain Underpants Series - Dav Pilkey
Genre: Animorphs AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 06:32:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16718149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstrokes/pseuds/Penstrokes
Summary: Edith knows what she's doing the right thing. Still, she can't help but notice how it's started to taint her.





	Kill them then cry over them

The air was a collage of smells. The tell tale faint tinge of plastic from the frozen, reheated food. The recognizable scent of hot, fresh pizza that, through no fault of her own, would become greasy yet dry after sitting in the heat lamp for hours. All of which mingled with Edith's own cooking. Cans, pans and frozen ingredients were her tools to which to feed an assembly line of hungry children. Most people would find this day in and day out barrage of cooking , serving and cleaning tedious and stressful. Edith found an odd inner peace among it all. 

She learned through this hectic repetitiveness the names, likes and dislikes of the children who frequented her line. Sometimes, time permitting, she'd talk to them.

About school, about home and friends.

She was a friend to the children and typically well liked. 

A sharp contrast to Mr. Krupp. She knew he could be a sweetheart, a sensitive man. Edith also knew why he couldn't let that part of him shine more often.

It was hard not to feel something for the kids. Vulnerable souls who had yet to figure out how the world worked. Her wolf eyes could pick out the similar features. Eyes, hair, mouths and noses all too familiar to those of her hungry patrons. Even more painfully so when she saw some of those very children  in the Yeerk Pool on missions. Her keen sense of hearing afforded her the luxury of hearing every gasp, grunt and cry. Embedded in her memory forever would be those scents and sounds of the parents who had been taken from their children, forever unaware of what had happened with their parents in the first place. 

 

It had always been an unspoken rule among them that they would simply injure the humans -parents especially- when possible and use lethal force only when necessary. It was an unfortunate fact of war that taking a life was unavoidable and they’d have to deal with the blood on their hands after the fact. It was the tasted of blood in Edith’s wolf mouth, the feel of all the nasty bits of living beings in her jaws that made meat the first casualty in Edith’s own personal war. She soon found herself as a vegan if not entirely vegan after the first few battles. The crunch of lettuce still got her from time to time and croutons were on that list of foods she wasn’t sure if she ought to stay away from. 

 

It was funny...not in a ‘haha funny’ kind of way but an unnerving way how laughter sounded so much like screaming. How two emotions on drastically opposite ends of the spectrum- enjoyment and suffering- sounded so like each other. More than once Edith had found herself jolted with fear, thinking maybe, just maybe she was back in that dreaded pool. Adrenaline filled her, whipping around with twitching fingers she’d almost started morphing wolf….only to realize it had been screams of laughter. Of innocent fun from a child who most likely than not was oblivious to the horrors going on behind the scenes. Edith liked to think that they were oblivious, distant and safe from the knowledge but she couldn’t deny that she’d seen some of the children there. Knew they were controllers, puppets in their own bodies and lives.

 

Edith knew what they were doing was a necessary evil.  That to protect the kids, she had to hurt them indirectly. The scornful eyes and voices of children controllers were a reminder of what they were fighting for. She had morals- they all did. Doing ‘the right thing’ made them blurry and muddy but on the grand scheme of things that’s just how they were. To mortally wound parts of herself that belonged to a kinder, softer her. To inflict upon those she sought to protect, Edith had no choice but to kill them and cry over them later.


End file.
